Plants provide a rich source of a variety of products which find use in foods, as raw materials, and as finished products. Vegetable fatty acids find extensive use for a wide variety of commercial purposes, being used as vegetable oils for cooking, as lubricants, in alkyd resins, as specialty chemicals, and the like. For the most part, the plant fatty acids tend to be of 18 carbon atoms, there usually being only a minor level of fatty acids having fewer than 16 carbon atoms. For many purposes, it would be desirable to have fatty acids in the range of 8 to 14 carbon atoms. There is, therefore, substantial interest in developing methods for producing vegetable oils where there is a substantial proportion of the total fatty acids of 14 carbon atoms or fewer.
To achieve this purpose, it will be necessary to modify the constituent members of the metabolic pathway resulting in the formation of fatty acids and their elongation to higher fatty acids. Toward this purpose, it will be necessary to be able to produce one or more components along the fatty acid metabolic chain which modify the course of the plant metabolism. In addition, there may be significant commercial applications for individual components of the fatty acid metabolic pathway.